


Taken at the Flood

by violet_storms



Series: sapphic september 2020 [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abigail Hobbs Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fix-It, Forests, Healing, Sapphic September, Supernatural Elements, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26642215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violet_storms/pseuds/violet_storms
Summary: In which Abigail Hobbs is a survivor, and Chiyoh breaks free of her cage.
Relationships: Abigail Hobbs & Hannibal Lecter, Chiyoh & Hannibal Lecter, Chiyoh/Abigail Hobbs
Series: sapphic september 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1907998
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Taken at the Flood

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Julius Caesar](https://shakespeare.folger.edu/downloads/pdf/julius-caesar_PDF_FolgerShakespeare.pdf) by William Shakespeare, lines 249-253.
> 
> _written for sapphic september 2020, prompt: "forest."_

Vanishing is as simple as Abigail assumes dying would be, and she should know better than anyone. It doesn’t take a lot to disappear; a knife left on her plate one night and windows without locks on them. It’s all so easy— _too easy,_ Abigail thinks at first, and she wonders if it’s some kind of trap, if Hannibal is testing her. Still, she does not hesitate. If this is a test, she has already failed.

She leaves him a note. She thought that she should. He does so like his courtesies. _You called me a survivor,_ she writes. _You were right._ She leaves it in his study, framed by shattered glass. When he returns to the house and finds her missing, his fingers will curl around the piece of paper and spike it red with blood. Whether it’s because of the cut on his hand or his own nails against his skin, no one will ever know. He throws it in the fire and watches it burn.

Somewhere, already miles away, Abigail laughs.

Chiyoh does not know what to do when the prisoner dies.

It’s not the right kind of day for when something like this happens, she thinks. It’s not raining, and it’s not cold, and she’s not tired, and it’s not dramatic or emotional or cathartic. All she can truly say about it is that it is _unexpected._ She wakes up, she goes to see him, and there he is, lying dead on the floor.

 _Well, isn’t this what you wanted?_ she asks herself. _Death from natural causes?_ But it’s a hollow sort of victory, and as she stares down at the dead man she’s not sure why she desired any of this at all.

She buries him at the edge of the forest and doesn’t mark the place. Chiyoh feels mechanical, going through the motions of shovel against earth and warm hands on cold ones. The sun comes up while she works, and as the rays of light pierce through the trees Chiyoh’s limbs begin to loosen, her breath to come easier. She feels like she’s unfreezing, thawing out, like she’s living anew.

When she steps full into the sunlight, leaving the grave of her prisoner behind her, for the first time in a long time, Chiyoh smiles.

Sometimes Abigail thinks she knows the forest better than she knows herself, and other times she’s sure of it. She has lived so much of her life here—walked this ground with a gun in her hands, tasted this air between bites of a deer she killed, felt this earth under her fingernails when she dug up Nicholas Boyle. She knows the forest and it knows her back. It takes her in. It welcomes her home.

It was not difficult to get here. Abigail stole a wallet or two at gas stations and diners, hitched a ride or seven from passing cars. You’re not supposed to pick up hitchhikers because they could be serial killers, but no one who looks at Abigail thinks she’s dangerous, not with those innocent eyes of hers. Innocent is the last thing Abigail is, but they never seem to see that. They never seem to see her at all. Some drop her off five minutes away, some drive her for five hours, and if her smile feels too familiar on her face, her forced laughter ringing in her ears like an echo, she tells herself it’s a good thing. She’s not hurting anyone this time. She’s doing this for her.

Of course, the other reason you’re not supposed to hitchhike is because the _drivers_ could be serial killers. The thought makes Abigail want to laugh. _Go ahead and let them try._

Abigail isn’t sure why she came back home. She could have run further—Canada, perhaps, or gone South, somewhere he would never look, someplace he could never find her. But in the end, she belongs in the forest, this forest, spending her days in the trees and her nights beneath the stars. From time to time she ventures into town, an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people where no one knows her name. She becomes a ghost girl buying things for the living, and then she returns to the forest where she is alive.

He could find her here, she thinks. He could.

Let him come. She is waiting.

Chiyoh finds him in a tabloid article, and it’s the most surreal thing she can imagine. Sitting at the dusty computer in the closest library she could find, she types _Hannibal Lecter_ into the search bar and waits. As the results load on the screen Chiyoh feels suddenly very cold. Is this what she has been reduced to, looking up a man who stole her life from her so she can ask him whether he wants to steal any more?

Then the article appears, and her eyes fasten to the image of him, drawn there like a magnet. _Hannibal Lecter with Abigail Hobbs,_ the caption reads, and Chiyoh realizes that the story is not about him. It’s about this girl, this girl who stares out from the photo with blue-eyed anger Chiyoh recognizes instantly. Hannibal’s hand rests on her shoulder like a benediction and Chiyoh’s stomach turns. _Wasn’t one enough for you?_ she thinks.

There is a location attached to the article. The Hobbs family home, a rectangular house surrounded by woods. Chiyoh stares at the picture long enough that the computer screen burns into her eyes, and then she pushes back her chair and stands.

She is going, she decides. Yes, she is going. But not to him.

Abigail can’t say how long it takes before she is drawn back to the house. Weeks? Months? The forest is so much larger than she expected. She lives off what she steals and what she earns, when she stays somewhere long enough to earn something. She carries her world in a backpack, and she hikes, and sings to the birds, and a lot of the time she feels like screaming, but Abigail doesn’t think she has a right to. She didn’t scream when her father cut her throat, after all, and nothing can be worse than that. So she fastens her lips closed and lets the shrieks crawl up her throat and wither between her teeth, and one day she goes back to the house.

It’s empty and clean and bare as bones even from the outside, and when Abigail lets herself in with the spare key under the mat she feels like she’s standing in a hollowed-out carcass. This used to be a home, she thinks, but now it is something less than a house. It simply _is._ Just like her.

She does not realize she has left the door open until she hears footsteps behind her. She spins around, raising the gun she stole from Hannibal, but the person she points it at does not raise hers. “Abigail?” the other woman says, pronouncing the name carefully, as though she is unsure it is truly a word.

“Yes,” Abigail says. “Who are you?” Then, without quite knowing why, she asks, “Did he send you?”

“Yes, and no,” says the other woman. “My name is Chiyoh. I have a story for you.”

“Tell it then,” says Abigail. And she lowers her gun.

“But it’s impossible,” says Abigail, once they are both done speaking. They sit together on the floor—there is nowhere else to sit—with their weapons lying between them, a barrier. “How can you have known him so long ago? Look at you. You’re hardly older than I am.”

Chiyoh looks down at herself sadly, her smooth skin appearing waxy under the pale light. She has discovered much in her journey to this place, but she still knows so little about what has been done to her. “He stole more from me than life,” she says. “He stole...time. The time I was at that castle. I spent twenty years with my prisoner, but none passed. I am old. I am young. I am nothing.”

“You are not nothing,” says Abigail quietly. Chiyoh shakes her head.

“I am to him. He is as a god, and I am his little bird. The prisoner was in a cage, but so was I. So were you.”

Abigail leans forward and wraps her hand around Chiyoh’s wrist like a vise, her nails cutting into her skin. “He is not some god,” she tells Chiyoh fiercely. “He did not leave that knife on my plate to test me, to see if I were clever enough to pick the lock. He did not leave it by accident. He left it to compliment himself, because he was certain I would never do it, certain he had pulled me in. He thought he would come back in the morning and I would hand the knife back to him myself. He thought he was brilliant, but he was blind.”

“He was wrong,” says Chiyoh.

“Yes,” says Abigail. “He was.”

They sit in silence, together on the floor. “What will you do?” Abigail asks her after a while. “Where will you go?”

“I do not know,” says Chiyoh. “Without him, I am not sure what I am.”

“Neither am I,” says Abigail. “But I could use some company finding out.”

Chiyoh looks up at her. “I would like that,” she says. Abigail stands up and dusts herself off. She offers Chiyoh her hand.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Later there will be stories told of them—but not quite of them. These will be stories of the Chesapeake Ripper and the Copycat Killer and the Monster of Florence, stories of Will Graham (a tortured soul) and Alana Bloom (that poor woman) and Jack Crawford (villain or victim?). Abigail will be a footnote in these stories. Chiyoh will not appear at all.

They prefer it that way.

Vanishing is as easy as dying. One day they are here, the next they are somewhere else entirely. They live in the woods and they live in the mountains and they live by the sea. They live. They survive.

Later there will be stories told of them—but not quite of them. These will be stories of two woodland spirits, two women with dark hair and necklaces made from bones. Some say the spirits are malevolent, evil, soul-devouring. Some say they are benevolent, huntresses who will steady your aim and cast an evil eye on those who do not honor their kills. Some say they are goddesses, some say they are ghosts, but all can agree on one thing: wherever the spirits travel, whatever forests they haunt, they are always together.

 _Two vessels,_ they whisper. _One soul._


End file.
